Friday, May 26, 2017

Roger Moore again

“You can’t be a real spy and have everybody in the world
know who you are and what your drink is. That’s just hysterically
funny.”
— Roger Moore

Years ago, some comedian made a joke about the Beverly Hillbillies movie. He quipped that Buddy Ebsen was the Sean Connery of Jed Clampets, like anyone taking on the role later was somehow lesser. But this article quotes those who disagree:

A.O. Scott, penning for the New York Times, tired at the
reminders that Connery was the better one, “real” in so far as these
approximations can be. “The Connery consensus seemed like part of a
larger baby boomer conspiracy to bully people my age [he's 50] into believing that
everything we were too young to have experienced firsthand was cooler
than what was right in front of our eyes.”

Sinclair McKay, reviewing Simon Winder’s otherwise compelling The Man Who Saved Britain,
also states his allegiance to Camp Moore. “There was just one error of
judgment and it’s a mistake most Bond aficionados make: Winder has
little time for Roger Moore, who was in fact the best screen Bond of
all.”

I see the James Bond movies as being about a guy who works for a horrible, abusive boss who is openly hostile to him, but his job lets him get away from the office for days at a time, drive around and stay in hotels. In Roger Moore's first James Bond movie, M and Miss Moneypenny barge into his apartment in the middle of the night and start pushing him around in his own house.